This morning as I was reading Ephesians 6 I received a new perspective on this chapter. We love to talk about putting on our full armor of God, make sure you have every piece of armor on, right? Well instead of jumping immediately to the middle of this chapter, let’s start at the beginning, where Paul is telling us how we are to treat each other. He begins with how children are to be with their parents, then moves to how fathers should act with their children (he points out fathers here but I believe mothers can listen to this as well). He then moves on to slaves and masters, I believe we can relate this today to bosses and employees. I do not think that Paul completely jumps ship with his train of thought here by then moving into the armor of God; I know by reading Paul’s other writings as well, he has purpose in his order of thoughts; stick with me here. I believe Paul is telling us first and foremost we need to focus on how we are treating others before we can go into battle (you do know we are in a spiritual battle, right, that’s a discussion for another day though), before the armor is effective we have to be mindful of how we are treating our fellow Christian soldiers! Our concern for others, especially those we are around on a regular basis should be top priority! The saying goes treat others the way you want to be treated; right, isn’t that what we tell our kids when they are little? Well how about we go a step beyond that, how about we treat others better then we want to be treated. How about we stop using the excuse of “respect is earned” and “I’m only doing to them what they do to everyone” and start being reflections of our Jesus like we are supposed to? If Jesus had done to people as they had done to Him, we would all be destined for hell! Just being real here. Human kind spit on Jesus , made fun of Jesus, picked a murderer over Jesus, beat Jesus until He was unrecognizable, and then hung Him on a tree to watch Him die – like it was a sporting event! But Jesus’ words were not payback is coming, or you will get yours one day, or what goes around comes around, but “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!” Has that ever been your response to being treated badly, I don’t know that I can say it’s been mine either, but today is a new day. Our God is a God of grace, mercy, and second chances. Focus today on being more Christ like in this area, the area of treating others better then you want to be treated. Back to my point, I believe when we feel like some attack is still getting though our armor, even though we thought we had it all on, it may be because of how we are treating people. If you are being harder on your kids then you should be, or ignoring your parents, maybe you slack off when the boss isn’t around, do you see your employees as less important then you? These things, these ways your are mistreating people in your life, anyone in your life, could be causing a chink in your armor. So maybe next time before you blame God and His armor for failing you, check your armor, make sure you haven’t made a chink of mistreating others, where the fiery darks can get through.